What does the House of Lords do?
The House of Lords is the second chamber of the UK Parliament. It is independent from, and complements the work of, the elected House of Commons. The Lords shares the task of making and shaping laws and checking and challenging the work of the government.
The Lords has three main roles:
Making laws
Members spend more than half their time in the House considering bills (draft laws). All bills have to be considered by both Houses of Parliament before they can become law. During several stages, members examine each bill, line-by-line, before it becomes an Act of Parliament (actual law). Many of these bills affect our everyday lives, covering areas such as welfare, health and education.
Find out more about the journey of a bill through the Lords
In-depth consideration of public policy
Members use their extensive individual experience to investigate public policy. Much of this work is done in select committees - small groups appointed to consider specific policy areas. Committee meetings are open to the public.
In 2022-23, there were 27 committees, with 235 members bringing expertise and experience to inquiries. There were 586 committee meetings and almost 3,000 people from outside the Lords had their say in inquiries. Lords committees published 70 reports on topics ranging from fixing adult social care to tackling digital fraud, family migration to BBC funding, and from climate change to the UK-Rwanda agreement.
Holding government to account
In 2022, the House of Lords considered 5,244 changes to 100 bills. Members raised concerns, pressed government for action and questioned decisions with debates, daily oral questions and urgent questions in over 3,350 hours of business. Topics included ambulance delays, social care vacancies, the cost of living, Ukraine, the environment and police corruption.
The public is welcome to visit and sit in the galleries overlooking the chamber during business.
What has the Lords changed?
Making a difference in recent years, the House of Lords has persuaded the government to make policy changes on a diverse range of issues. These include:
- criminalising intimidation or harassment aggravated by hostility towards a victim's sex or gender
- making a new offence for photographing breastfeeding in public without permission
- making it illegal to have sex-for-rental accommodation
- reducing single use items
- reducing the impact of raw sewage discharges into rivers and coastal waters
- giving coroners and bereaved families access to information held by technology companies
- making non-fatal strangulation and threats to release intimate images an offence.